Jurassic Park The Game: Review thread - post your impressions here!

The release date for the game is finally here and I'm sure everyone will be dieing to voice their opinions on the game as well as post reviews from other websites. Instead of having thousands of post with different reviews, I figured it would be easier to have one thread dedicated to Jurassic Park reviews.

I haven't been able to play it yet but I will be posting seperate reviews for each episode here as I finish them.

So if anyone wants to share their opinon after finally getting to play the game, or want to share links to reviews of the game from other website here's a great thread to do it.

It's a bit harsh but I believe it's fair. There are no spoilers in my review although some of the images might be. The TL;DR version: Story is good, characters are great, poor implementation of QTEs, disappointing quality overall.

No no. You have 2 options. You click one of the keys (Or buttons) to chose Jess or the can. I choose Jess everytime because Nima is badass and doesn't deserve to die. So, when you get two options to pick over can and jess, click the button or whatever next to jess. ^-^ The can (I think) is going to be destroyed either way. I have only tried the way to save jess, so I wouldn't know.

OH NO WONDER, I was busy button mashing at the time. Silly me.

Welp, got Nima saved.

Also I had to do a count of how many times my game froze for each episode:

I just finished the 4th episode now, so I guess I'll give my opinion.I admit that after the huge disappointment that was BTTF I was skeptical but I knew it was going to be a different kind of game so I knew not to expect an overly challenging game.I don't normally rate but I'll put down some rough numbers down based on what I thought.

Gameplay

I'm a fan of QTEs and I really liked how Heavy Rain was done and this type of gameplay fits in well in a game where storytelling is important.It's great that TTG is willing to do games with different sorts of gameplay and I really hope they continue to do so.

The way you change between different characters to solve puzzles is very innovative and the puzzle in Episode 4 where you needed to identify a certain 4-way intersection was a great example of a good puzzle. BUT they could have done so much more with this type of gameplay. There should be more layers to the puzzles and more exploration. Instead of a 4-piece jigsaw puzzle they should have designed a 16-piece jigsaw puzzle and combined more character interaction with environment interaction.

7/10 - Good execution but also a lot of unused potential.

Characters

I loved every one of the characters, except for the scientist, Laura.Laura was annoying, seriously, and her death was really satisfying, hehe.The character development and interaction was really well done though, absolutely. Billy was the best character without question, and Nima, Jess, Gerry, Oscar; all were really well constructed personality-wise.

The story is fantastic, and the one thing that makes me react positively to it. Without a compelling story, this game would be nothing.It was told very well, it had suspense and excitement and really kept you in your chair playing.

The only negative thing is that it is too linear. There needs to be more options and more ways a story can develop. If you're gonna have an alternate ending you can't just have one piece of dialogue in the last episode or whatever determine the ending. There needs to be gradual build-ups to various alternate endings. Linear stories have no replayability. Go and play Shadow of Memories and note the difference.

8/10 - Full marks for story, thumbs down for linearity.

Graphics

Now the graphics are a different story. The environment, buildings and stationary objects are all passable, but the people need alot of work.The same problem was in BTTF, and it hasn't improved much.

The worst thing in my book is facial expressions. It's utter crap and the showing of emotions like fear and anger are totally not believable. It's extremely rough around the edges and TTG really need to hire a decent team to do these animations.Lip-sync is bad as well and need a whole lot of work.Overall animations like walking, running and fighting are a lot better than in BTTF but still clunky and a little rough around the edges and it could be done better without too much effort.

2/10 - Visual interaction is the only thing preventing flawless character interaction.

Quick-time events

Mostly well-designed, though I might suggest giving slightly more time for certain sequences. Sometimes i didn't have enough time because the icon disappeared almost instantly. A quarter of a second more time would have done it.

Also failure should give more options. One QTE in particular that irked me was at the end of the game, where Nima fought Billy. I intentionally failed all the button presses because I wanted to see Billy stab Nima, but he didn't. It had the same result no matter what, and it was disappointing. Billy's fate was sad because I really liked his character but I'm also glad that the Telltale team did what they did because having your playable characters getting killed is something they haven't done before. It adds emotion and depth to the game and please don't stop doing that.

And the award system? Pointless and redundant. I don't care about getting a gold award, I'd rather see what happens if I fail! Getting a gold medal doesn't gain me anything anyway, and all the various deaths that I saw were really well done.

Fair's fair, story, characters and ambiance are the strong points, but the graphical animations on characters are just too important to make the interactions believable. Not much effort was put in that area of the game, and it shows.

I just finished the 4th episode now, so I guess I'll give my opinion.I admit that after the huge disappointment that was BTTF I was skeptical but I knew it was going to be a different kind of game so I knew not to expect an overly challenging game.I don't normally rate but I'll put down some rough numbers down based on what I thought.

Gameplay

I'm a fan of QTEs and I really liked how Heavy Rain was done and this type of gameplay fits in well in a game where storytelling is important.It's great that TTG is willing to do games with different sorts of gameplay and I really hope they continue to do so.

The way you change between different characters to solve puzzles is very innovative and the puzzle in Episode 4 where you needed to identify a certain 4-way intersection was a great example of a good puzzle. BUT they could have done so much more with this type of gameplay. There should be more layers to the puzzles and more exploration. Instead of a 4-piece jigsaw puzzle they should have designed a 16-piece jigsaw puzzle and combined more character interaction with environment interaction.

7/10 - Good execution but also a lot of unused potential.

Characters

I loved every one of the characters, except for the scientist, Laura.Laura was annoying, seriously, and her death was really satisfying, hehe.The character development and interaction was really well done though, absolutely. Billy was the best character without question, and Nima, Jess, Gerry, Oscar; all were really well constructed personality-wise.

The story is fantastic, and the one thing that makes me react positively to it. Without a compelling story, this game would be nothing.It was told very well, it had suspense and excitement and really kept you in your chair playing.

The only negative thing is that it is too linear. There needs to be more options and more ways a story can develop. If you're gonna have an alternate ending you can't just have one piece of dialogue in the last episode or whatever determine the ending. There needs to be gradual build-ups to various alternate endings. Linear stories have no replayability. Go and play Shadow of Memories and note the difference.

8/10 - Full marks for story, thumbs down for linearity.

Graphics

Now the graphics are a different story. The environment, buildings and stationary objects are all passable, but the people need alot of work.The same problem was in BTTF, and it hasn't improved much.

The worst thing in my book is facial expressions. It's utter crap and the showing of emotions like fear and anger are totally not believable. It's extremely rough around the edges and TTG really need to hire a decent team to do these animations.Lip-sync is bad as well and need a whole lot of work.Overall animations like walking, running and fighting are a lot better than in BTTF but still clunky and a little rough around the edges and it could be done better without too much effort.

2/10 - Visual interaction is the only thing preventing flawless character interaction.

Quick-time events

Mostly well-designed, though I might suggest giving slightly more time for certain sequences. Sometimes i didn't have enough time because the icon disappeared almost instantly. A quarter of a second more time would have done it.

Also failure should give more options. One QTE in particular that irked me was at the end of the game, where Nima fought Billy. I intentionally failed all the button presses because I wanted to see Billy stab Nima, but he didn't. It had the same result no matter what, and it was disappointing. Billy's fate was sad because I really liked his character but I'm also glad that the Telltale team did what they did because having your playable characters getting killed is something they haven't done before. It adds emotion and depth to the game and please don't stop doing that.

And the award system? Pointless and redundant. I don't care about getting a gold award, I'd rather see what happens if I fail! Getting a gold medal doesn't gain me anything anyway, and all the various deaths that I saw were really well done.

Fair's fair, story, characters and ambiance are the strong points, but the graphical animations on characters are just too important to make the interactions believable. Not much effort was put in that area of the game, and it shows.

What are you going on about? The graphics were amazing for me, the animations were off though. Did you mess with your settings>

I have to say its a different game... I have a brother who doesn't play games but likes Jp so im playing ep3 he enters the room to get something. And the story hooked him. He sat and watched until I finished. He loved it. My mom did the same thing the next day lol. As far as my opinions as a die hard fan. I loved it. Kept true to the movies ( and books oddly enough). The characters really stood out. And the dinos had different personalities. As a fossil hunter surrounded by tons of Paleozoic rock I really liked the marine facility puzzle. The story was great and deserved a movie in its own right. The game play was engaging without killing the pace or story. And as an open water diver I felt a real connection with episode 4. I think how the mosasaur came to be should have been mentioned. But I liked how it was done and I am satisfied as a fan and Dino nerd. Graphics looked beast on my machine so no complaints there. I would buy season 2 in a heart beat Thanks for an epic game ( I felt 5 again lol) That's my thought on it. But seriously season 2 please

It's a bit harsh but I believe it's fair. There are no spoilers in my review although some of the images might be. The TL;DR version: Story is good, characters are great, poor implementation of QTEs, disappointing quality overall.

I completely agree with this review; the bits of lag were so frustrating. I lowered the settings and still had some issues, though not to the lowest settings. I feel I shouldn't have to lower my settings to play a game when my computer is pretty decent and most games I own will run just fine on max settings. Still, story is what had always set early LucasArts apart. Telltale games does pretty well at carrying that torch (as it should given the history of the company) and it's story that will keep me playing it, if nothing else.

One thing I would like to emphasize is that I HATED having to individually scroll through each graphic setting to get to mine. I have no idea who thought (or rather didn't) that this was a good idea, but even though I only had to do it once, it was the first impression made on me by the game. A lack of certain common features also irked me, namely quicksave. Lacking it wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't lag for a millisecond during the dilophosaurus attack, causing me to catch a face-full of venomous puke because I missed hitting a button.

Overall, the game (when it works properly) is fun enough and definitely interesting enough to play through, but it's gonna take a perfectionist a while with frequent scene retries due to lagging graphics. (At least if you have an ATI card, apparently)